A niche blog dedicated to the issues that arise when supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) extend patents beyond their normal life -- and to the respective positions of patent owners, investors, competitors and consumers. The blog also addresses wider issues that may be of interest or use to those involved in the extension of patent rights. You can email The SPC Blog here

Wednesday, 23 July 2008

The most recent issue of the Bio-Science Law Review (BSLR, published six times a year by Lawtext Publishing) carries a short note by Taylor Wessing Associate Catherine Drew. This note, "Patents -- SPC Regulations", discusses the recent decision of the UK IPO in Merck & Co. Inc, BL O/108/08, on whether a SPC can have a negative or zero term.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

The UKIPO decision could be described as the result of the first battle in what looks like being a reasonably long war on how the effect of the 6-month SPC term extension (due to conducting trials in the paediatric population) is calculated.

The opening salvo was fired in a Snodin and Miles article published in the July 2007 edition of Regulatory Affairs Journal, Pharma (Vol. 18, No. 7, pp. 459-463). The UKIPO decision is discussed in the June 2008 edition of the same journal (Vol. 19, No. 6, pp. 387-388).

We await with bated breath to see what the various national and regional patent offices (and, possibly, the ECJ) make of the issue!

Bianca-Lucia Vos and Klemens Stratmann of Hoffmann-Eitle have generously provided a copy of a recent decision of the Higher Regional Court o...

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